NEWS Pat Byrne elected new NCC president

With the retirement of Peter Westmore at the NCC’s recent National Conference, Pat Byrne was elected unanimously as National President of the National Civic Council.

NCC president Pat Byrne

Peter Westmore announced his retirement to the conference, after holding the position for the past 20 years, since the death of NCC founder B.A. “Bob” Santamaria. He made clear that he intended to continue to be involved in the organisation in whatever capacity the new leadership wanted. He will remain publisher of News Weekly.

Pat Byrne, a graduate in Arts, majoring in Economics, from the University of Queensland, has been actively involved with the Movement since his university days, when he was involved in the “campus wars” of the late 1970s and 1980s.

He worked for some years in the Brisbane office of the NCC before moving to Melbourne in the 1990s. He has been national vice-president of the NCC since 2005.

Pat has played a key role in policy development and organisation, particularly on issues like national water policy, the future of the Murray-Darling Basin, the sugar industry, trade and industry policy (including the creation of a national development bank, based on the Commonwealth Development Bank model). He has made an extraordinary contribution to the public debate around all these issues.

While maintaining his activities in these fields, in recent times, he was heavily involved in the campaign to defend marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and has worked to develop a coherent response to the push to embed gender ideology in state and federal legislation.